


Warm Enough

by sherlezza



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Choking, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, not really it's just kind of referenced, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 04:09:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1591121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlezza/pseuds/sherlezza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s been in your bed for six days and hasn’t left once. </p><p>You’re so scared that if he does you’ll convince yourself he was never there at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warm Enough

You are drowning but there’s not water in your lungs anymore. You almost wish there was. It hurt and it burned a hole all the way down to your heart but at least it felt like something real, something fixable, something that kicked you over and over until your survival instincts brought you back. You were unconscious, yes, but you recall…something. A hard grip, fingers, hard, tight, so-strong-much-too-strong, coiled on your arm, dragging your weight, and then the water was gone, you were alive, so alive, and never so ready to die.

 

\----

 

“I’m sorry, Steve.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’m still sorry.”

Her thumbs drum against the table, fingers fiddle with the handle of her coffee mug. You’re in her apartment, and afternoon sunlight filters through the soft floral curtains onto the warm, wooden table. You would never have expected her to have floral curtains, but seeing them now, and seeing her, blunt red hair pulled back in a messy bun, sitting cross-legged on the floor in a pair of heather grey sweats, you wonder how you missed it. She looks up at you, peeks from behind long feathery eyelashes, and sighs. Her thumbs wrap tighter around the mug. 

“Do you want me to stay? Maybe I could help. If you need it.” She looks at you again and there’s an openness in her expression that you’re sure most people don’t get to see. Knowing that it’s there for you brings the first smile to your face in days. You smile at her, for her, so she knows how much you appreciate the offer. But you know you have to be the one to find him—it can’t be anyone else. It’s never been anyone else.

“No,” you say softly, “But thanks.”

 

\----

 

You’re standing in a room that’s so empty it’s suffocating. Dust is piled on an empty bookshelf, and suddenly you find yourself hurling the bookshelf across the room, just to see something move. It slams into the drywall on the other side and leaves a notable indentation. The dust swirls around the room, but somehow breathing just got a lot easier. 

You know that dust is made from people.

You know it’s made from dead skin cells and animal dander and pollen and sometimes cigarette ash. A huff of laughter bubbles out of your throat; you always hated when he smoked, but right now you’re begging any force in the universe to see him take a drag, because as long as he’s smoking he’s alive. You can’t help but admire the irony, but you’re smiling nonetheless, and watching the dust continue dancing around you. 

You know that dust is made from people.

If he was here, you know that most of this dust is made up of him. 

You inhale as hard as you can.

 

\----

 

“You are shivering hard enough to cause a damn earthquake, Stevie.” The words tumble out followed by a puff of hot breath in a frigid, dilapidated apartment bedroom. It’s your apartment, or it was your apartment, back when you were 95 pounds of wheezing, asthmatic patriotism and he wasn't a brainwashed assassin with a kill order on you. Unfortunately, it was also back when you couldn’t rub two pennies together and didn’t have a place to live that was heated. The only heat in the whole room is a fireball in your chest as you look over towards the warm voice on your left, belonging to your best friend, who is curled on the floor with something that really doesn’t deserve to be called a blanket. 

“Sorry,” you whisper, and your breath follows your words too, puffing out in front of you, warm for a fraction of a second and then gone. Do you even remember what warmth feels like? You firmly doubt it. But Bucky isn’t shivering, he’s just lying on the floor five feet away from you, which feels like six feet too many, and the fire in your heart threatens to burn you right then and there if you don’t stop looking at him. You hear him sigh—he sounds concerned, which he always does in regards to you. You don’t know if that makes you happy or sad, but it definitely makes you something. 

“Stevie,” he rumbles, his voice low with sleepiness, but you know he won’t rest until he knows you’re not going to die of hypothermia. You feel your breath catch in your throat as he whispers again. “Steve. C’mere.” Suddenly you’re not cold anymore as the fireball in your chest explodes like a supernova, but you’re not going to miss the chance to crawl into his arms; you’ll take any excuse you can find. You hate yourself for it, but it doesn’t stop you from curling your frail body into him and letting his breath warm the back of your neck. 

“Warm enough for you yet, punk?”

You don’t sleep, at all. You just try to enjoy it, because you know it won’t last.

When you know he’s asleep, you whisper into the emptiness in front of you.

“Only with you.”

 

\----

 

You keep looking. You’ve lost track of how long you’ve been looking, but you don’t think it’s more than four months yet; but time feels like it’s passing too quickly, and he’s still not here, and you’re still not there, and when you lose track of how long exactly you’ve been looking you feel fear clench around your sternum. You don’t want to lose track. That’s when people start to give up, that’s when they start to forget—first, they lose track, then they lose whoever they’re looking for. You force yourself to count the exact number of days it’s been since you both stopped and started drowning. 

 

\----

 

You have spent the last 72 hours in your apartment, holed up, digging for answers in every file Natasha could get her hands on. Your metabolism runs at three times the rate of a normal person’s, but you’ve only eaten two stale bagels and a box of Cap’n Crunch you found in your pantry in three days (the cereal had been the last thing you found, stuffed in the back of a cupboard, a joke from Stark, who had cut and pasted a terrible photo of you right over “Cap’n Crunch” himself). 

Today, something feels different, and regardless of how little you’ve eaten over the last three days, you feel hope buoy in your chest that maybe you’ll get somewhere soon. The hope lasts until you’re lying in bed, and the heat in your apartment is stifling, and you’ve torn off the sheets and you’ve torn off everything but your boxers and you’re still producing your weight in sweat. Not for the first time, you wish you were cold, cold, cold, and that you weighed 95 pounds, and that you could selfishly exaggerate your shivers just to feel his strong arms wrap around your back, around your stomach, around your throat…around your throat, gripping hard, a hand, but it’s not made of flesh and blood and bone and you can’t breathe and you feel him all around you, bright blue eyes filled with an animal fear meeting yours and cold metal clenching so hard, and you choke out his name like your last prayer over and over until his grip around your neck has gone slack and limp and he’s crumpled into himself like a broken toy on your bare chest and you never knew that a person could cry like that. You hold him close, but it’s not close enough, it’s never close enough and it never has been and it never will be. His long hair skims your chest and his tears leave a sparkling trail like stars around your collarbone, and he’s still holding onto you, hands at your neck, and there’s a threat there and you should be running, but you’ve never had it in you to run away before and you don’t now. You chant his name into his hair like it’s the only word you ever learned, and your hands stroke down his back in an effort to soothe, to heal, to protect. He falls asleep curled over you, head on your chest, coiled tight like a spring, and you swear you won’t fall asleep but he’s warm around you in all the right ways and when you wake up he is gone and two of his hairs are clinging to your neck, the only thing convincing you he was ever really there.

 

\----

 

It’s been four days since you held him and you don’t know if you’ll make it to five. 

 

\----

 

Each night you drink a pot of the blackest coffee you can get your hands on, and you wait for him. You know it’s the only way that you’ll ever see him again—not by searching, but by waiting. 

You’ve lived alone for a long time but it’s never felt this lonely. 

Natasha calls sixteen times.

Sam calls seven times. 

You make more coffee.

 

\----

 

You were eight years old when you truly realized you loved him. You were twelve years old when you truly realized you were in love with him. You knew you couldn’t ever tell anyone, least of all him—and you watched while he flirted and smirked, charmed and teased, and the fireball in your heart didn’t feel so good anymore, it felt venomous and painful and it singed a hole through you that you tried to cover with forced smiles and the word “jerk.” He brought you on double dates. You pretended the girls weren’t there. You heard people whisper about it, how people like that were diseased, sick, in need of fixing. And when you looked at him, you definitely felt diseased. 

 

\----

 

You finally go out because you don’t have a choice anymore: the pantry is completely bare, and more importantly, you’re out of coffee. When you get back, you spend eight minutes unpacking your groceries before you realize that you’re not alone—there’s a black smudge on the windowsill and a half-empty glass of water sitting on the marble countertop. You’re trying to remember how to breathe while you slowly make your way back into your bedroom, where the door is cracked open—how could you have missed it? You try to keep your footsteps solid and heavy and slow, not too loud so as to wake him but not too quiet so as to scare him if he is awake. 

When you open the door, he’s curled in the fetal position on your bed, wearing a white t-shirt that you know is yours. His long, straggly hair is covering half his face and he’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever set eyes on in your life. You move to sit next to him, the mattress dipping at your weight, and you watch as his eyelids clench at the movement and then everything snaps all at once, and his eyes are wide so wide and the bed is empty and he’s already halfway across the room before you can grab him, and he doesn’t struggle but he doesn’t come back either. The animal fear is back in his eyes, and you regret your selfishness, you shouldn’t have sat on the bed, you were selfish and you scared him and you love him and it’s your fault.

“Bucky,” you whisper, because you know if you don’t whisper your voice will crack. “Please, Bucky, it’s me. It’s Steve. It’s me. You know me. You saved me,” and then, without warning, “I love you.” 

His pupils blow wide and his body twitches away from you, his hand slips out of your grasp, comes up to clutch his head. “No. No. No,” he whimpers, his metal hand twisting in his hair, his eyes wide with fear and hurt and pain and a million other things you hate yourself for not being able to fix. “I—I don’t—no—I’m not him.” And it’s there that his voice cracks, and tears streak his face and he doesn’t even try to wipe them away. He looks at you with a desperation that wrecks everything inside you. “I’m not him. You don’t love me, I’m not him, I’m not him I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—,” and he screams and there’s an anguish in his voice that could tear down a city and all you can think to do is bring your arms around him and pull him to your chest and your tears are falling freely now, too, and you clutch him tight so he can never fall away from you again and the only words you have for him spill from your lips into his hair again, “I love you I love you I love you I love you please stay.” 

 

\----

 

He’s asleep again, but fitfully this time, and he thrashes and he cries out and reaches for you, hands twisting in the sheets, cold hard metal stretching out your shirt as you lie awake next to him. You’ve had your share of nightmares but you know they don’t compare to what he’s going through, and they likely never will. You capture him in your arms, and holding him again feels so fucking right it’s almost too much. He screams, once, loud and piercing, and then falls into soft moans, soft whimpers, when you wrap yourself around him. 

He mumbles in his sleep whenever you hold him. You can’t quite make out anything, but at least he isn’t screaming.

 

\----

 

You dream of kissing him. 

He dreams of killing you. 

You both wake up crying.

 

\----

 

It’s been two days and he hasn’t left yet; he’s also mostly been asleep, but you’ll take what you can get. 

Natasha has called forty-seven times. 

Sam has called thirty-five times. 

You’re afraid they’ll take him away from you, tell you he’s dangerous. His metal hand closes around your throat in his sleep. You know he’s dangerous.

He mumbles in his sleep whenever you hold him.  
“Warm enough for you yet, punk?”

 

\----

 

“Where the hell have you been I am going to kill you in your sleep, revive you, and then kill you again.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I swear to God, Steve. One hundred and twelve calls. I’m going to kill you once for each one.”

“I’m sorry.”

"That's one hundred and twelve kills. In a row. I know how to do it."

“I know.”

“You found him.”

“No.”

“Really.” It’s not a question. Then, “Be careful.” 

 

\----

 

He mumbles in his sleep whenever you hold him.

“Warm enough for you yet, punk?” 

A soft sigh. His arms snake around you, squeeze tight. He huffs a breath into the crook of your neck. You stay as still as humanly possible. 

“Hmmmmm?” he growls against your ear. You feel his hips shift, lining up against your ass. You know your face is not it’s normal color. He’s waiting for a reply.

“Only with you.” You whisper it into the emptiness in front of you and pray he’s recalling the same memory you are.

“Mmmm. Good.” His voice is low, slurred. He rolls his hips languidly onto you, sighs. It’s almost a groan. “God, Steve, y’ feel so good. I always…wondered…always wanted…,” his voice drifts off, and you hear him start pulling in deeper breaths. 

You don’t sleep, at all.

 

\----

 

He’s been in your bed for six days and hasn’t left once. 

You’re so scared that if he does you’ll convince yourself he was never there at all.

 

\----

 

“Steve.” He murmurs against your back at 3:14 on a Saturday morning. You don’t know how long you’ve been in bed, but you definitely thought he was asleep. You twist in the sheets, turning to face him. Your calves are touching, wrapped around each other. He looks into your eyes, and you feel a rush of relief that there isn’t any fear in his gaze. 

“Yeah, Buck?”

Suddenly, a little bit of fear. Or maybe not fear, but…something like humiliation. He averts his eyes, casts his gaze down at the sheet he’s twisting in his metal fingers. You reach out a hand, twist your fingers between his shining ones. You wonder if you’ve ever seen anything that you loved more, besides his face. 

“Bucky, you can tell me, it’s okay.”

“Were we…did I…?” He blushes. You feel like you’re burning alive, the fireball in your chest is tearing a hole through you. You want to say yes, and smash your mouth against his and show him that you were, that you always were, that he couldn’t have ever belonged to anyone else and that you never even dreamt of anyone but him, ever.

“No, Buck.” 

His flush spreads to his neck. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t of…I just thought…I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—,” 

You catch his next sorry between your lips and crush it with your teeth, and you don’t know how it happened but in a second you’re all around him, and he’s whimpering into your throat and his metal arm is pressing, cold, against the small of your back and you can feel hot fresh tears press between your faces and you don’t know if they are yours or his but they feel kind of like a baptism and you’ve been waiting your whole life to find salvation in his arms, between his lips.

“I’ve always wanted you, I’ve always wanted you,” he sobs against your mouth, voice cracking into your throat, and you can taste the salt of his tears as he breaks against you like a tidal wave. “I don’t remember everything but I remember wanting you.” 

 

\----

 

You’ve never made love to anyone. 

He’s pressing against your back, the hardness of his chest filling in the curve. His lips leave a trail like a comet down your neck and you feel the curtain of his hair brush against your cheek. You’re clothed in nothing but his arms and it’s all you ever wanted, and he sighs as he presses into you, gently, and you intertwine your fingers with his metal ones and bring them to your lips. You move together, lose track of time as you join together again and again and again.

 

\----

 

"I want to know about you. All the things I don't remember yet."

 _Yet._ You like his word choice. "Okay. Ask me."

"What's your favorite color?"

"Red, White, and Blue."

He glares. 

"Okay. Blue. And yours is green."

"I know that. What's your favorite...shape?"

"The one we make in bed together."

 

"You fucking sap."

\----

 

Cold metal fingers close around your neck at 4:22 in the morning. 

Then, they release, skim your shoulders, down your arm, and come finally to rest against your open palm. Love swells in your chest, so much you think you might drown in it. 

Or maybe, you can finally stop drowning.

 

\----

 

You twist around in bed, and see all the things you used to hate yourself for dreaming about. Dust dances in the afternoon sunlight that dapples the sheets and warms your skin. 

He still mumbles in his sleep whenever you hold him. The only thing you want to wake up to ever again is his sleep-heavy voice against your skin, “Warm enough for you yet, punk?”

 

\----

 

Apparently, you mumble in your sleep whenever he holds you. 

“Only with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> so because i like pain and tears, you can now read this again but from bucky's perspective instead of Steve's [here!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1697222)
> 
> Big thanks to [Jen](http://thekneegrope.tumblr.com) and [Jenna](http://deanbunnies.tumblr.com) for reading all the completely out-of-order excerpts that I would not stop sending them.  
> [And here's the obvious link to my own tumblr](http://barnvs.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Only With You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1697222) by [sherlezza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlezza/pseuds/sherlezza)




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